BOOKS,,

PITT AND THE POOR LAW.*

DE. RosE's indomitable poWere of research have brought to Bight some new and very interesting letters belonging to the Pitt and Napoleon period. Thus there is a series of letters from. Pitt to the third Duke of Portland and another series between Pitt and the first Lord Harrowby. Other letters from Grenville, Berke, and Canning have been found in the archives of Lord Stanhope and Mr. Pretyman. Besides these new letters which form the second part of the book there are ten essays, only • two of which have appeared before, and a reprint of a conversation between British visitors and Napoleon when he was in Elba. This last was printed at the time for private circulation only, and at will no doubt be quite new to nearly all Dr.-Rose's readers. It is a very curious document. The whole book is good reading. , But surely Dr. Rode must be an indifferent critic of his own work to have given the position of honour to his essay on Pitt's oratory. He has not enough delicacy in appre- eiation to catch and fix the fine shades of such a very elusive thing as oratory. , The essay is unilluminating. What he :says is true enough, but ,it is vaguely true—true with an absence of precision—and would have been scarcely less true et other orators with whom Dr. Rose supposes himself to tlie comparing. Pitt. The essay on the Quiberon disaster .shows that the king and not Pitt was responsible for the failure properly to reinforce the expedition. Admirable essays are those on " Did 'Napoleon intend to Invade England ?" and. "Napoleon's Conception of the Battle of *Waterloo." In ." The True Significance of Trafalgar " Dr. Rose argues that the effect of the victory was not what Nelson believed it would be. Napoleon, unknown to lsielson, had already broken up the concentration on the atorthern shores of France, which threatened England, and had been drawn into the interior of the Continent by the out- break of war with Russia and Austria. Nelson kneit nothing of this. Napoleon very likely felt exactly what lie said when lie spoke in an offhand way of "ce combat de Cadiz." Never- theless though Trafalgar did not immediately make any difference to Napoleon's schemes the gradual pressure of the :sea-power now in British hands exerted its irresistible effect. Dr. Rose dOes not attempt to dispute that. His essay deals only with the immediate effect of Trafalgar on Napoleon's edietnes.

We wish to draw particular attention to the essay on

• -"'Pitt and Relief of the Peon" What Dr. Rose sets forth Vero is a forgotten chapter of English history. There is nothing so true as that economic error is unchangeable. Error a» ay appear in a new dress, may have a fresh application, but "'the more it changes the more it is the same thing." Apparently each generation has to learn its lesson afresh. Under Pitt we see the awakening of ideas which led directly tErthe appalling Poor Law administration exposed in unforget- table, terms in the. famous Report. of 1834.

Between 1794 and 1797 the English poor were poor indeed. Vit'ices* were heavy, work was uncertain, food was dear. Un- employment, unrest, and high prices were of course the direct result of the high taxes. These things always'go together. The 'system of poor' relief then in use dated substantially from the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign and assigned to the magis- trates of each parish responsibility for the poor. Naturally a teat variety of schemes were invented by the magistrates, and paupers fell into the habit of wandering about in search A the most desirable places of abode ; in other words, the

places where payment for doing nothing was highest. Under Charles II. this tendency was checked by the severe Act of Settleinent, but the drones were unfortunately thereby tied to the places where they bad established themselves. .Seme places were ovniatoelted with men, while other places were in sore need of labour. This accounted for the curious grog Napoleon: Esea,is and Letters. By J. E080, Litt.D.

London G. Boll and Sons. [10e. 424. net.] inequalities' in wages noted by Adam Sthith. The Cramping • effects of the Act of Settlement, in spite of some efforts be

remedy them, were still felt almost as much as ever in 1782, when Gilbert's well-known. Act was passed. Gilbert's object was to facilitate the movement of labour, and the Unions were accordingly formed to furnish relief in common and replace the village poor-houses by one central workhouse. Salaried Guardians were chosen by the magistrates. Gilbert's Act was permissive, and was taken up by only 924 parishes. Its effect was thus very far from being universal, although it was the beginning of a national system. One clause of the Act was very mischievous. It enabled the Guardians to provide the able-bodied poor with work near their own homes at a rate of pay sufficient for their maintenance-an uneconomic form of outdoor relief which, of course, led to preposterous abuses. Such were the facts before Pitt when he instituted a Parliamentary Inquiry. The . Report of the Committee of Inquiry was issued in 1786 and was a small production come

pared with the famous Report of 1834. It' showed the.. strangely diverse practices of London parishes.

"Some had houses of industry, others had not. Some let out their paupers at Bs. 6d. or 4s. each per week to contractors at Blackfriars, Heaton, &c. In other workhouses the paupers toiled on behalf of the rates ; elsewhere for the benefit of the master or mistress. The occupations' were mostly spinning, weaving; or ' oakum-picking. In the country workhouses spinning or weaving was the rule ; but the method of sale of the produce is not stated."

No immediate change was introdueed in spite of this revela- tion of slipshod methods. The next important step was in 1795, when the magistrates of Berkshire met near Newbury and drew up a plan which had momentous issues.

"Finding that the weavers of that district and the makers of broadcloth at Newbury were in sore distress, owing to lack of work and the high price of bread, they resolved to systematize the cus- tom of supplementing wages from the poor rates, which,, as we have seen, was legalized by Gilbert's Act of the year 1782. They preferred this course to the alternative of raising the wages of day labourers by magisterial enactment; a custom which, besides being almost obsolete, entailed much friction at the ensuing time of reduction of wages. Accordingly they enacted that, when the gallon loaf of second flour cost one shilling, every • poor and industrious man should receive three shillings a week for himself and half that amount for his wife and each child. • When the loaf cost one shilling and fourpence, the relief was assessed at four shillings for the man. and one shilling and ten- ponce for the wife or child. For every penny of increase in the price of the loaf the dole rose by threepence and one penny respectively."

This system of doles was more paralysing than anything that had gone before. There was talk, of course, as there always is in such cases, of " the poor and industrious man " who alone was to benefit. But thOegh a man remains poor under such expedients be does not remain industrious. The Berkshire justices established in effect a minimum wage. '

The evil' spread. Farmers, knowing that the minimum wage would be made good out of the rates, lowered their scale of pay, and the unhappy poor were crushed by the increasing burden of rates. At Witley, in Surrey, the rate rose to 18s.

in the pound. Twenty-five years later at Cholesbury, in Bucks, every man was a pauper except the parson. Pitt approved of these extraordinary methods without in the least recognizing what harm was being done. It was not until the revelations of 1834 were made that it was understood that the social system of England was verging on bankruptcy, both financial and moral.

The Berkshire justices had in effect, we said, instituted a minimum wage. But an actual minimum wage was pro-

posed by Whitbread in 1795 in a Bill which authorized justices to say what the wage should be. This was too much for Pitt. He opposed the Bill on the ground that it was impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line, but he argued most dangerously that the assessment of relief should be in proportion to the number of children in a family. The Bill was thrown out. One plan for assuring comfort in old age which was born at this time was Harriott's scheme of contributory old-age pensions. It was not proposed, however, that the contributions should be compulsory. The only compulsion in the matter woe • to be moral; there was a provision that any one who did not subscribe but afterWards applied to the parish for relief should be obliged to wear a' badge bearing the word "Drone" in largored letters.

In his speech of February 1796,, outlining a scheme of poor' relief, Pitt suggested that parochial schools of industry should be fOrMed and that "an annual Poor Law Budget"' elsOuld' be presented' to Parliament. He was prevented by foreign alarms and by the scarcity of money from introdticing hie Bill till the autumn, but in the summer he weakly supported enervating principles of outdobr relief for "industrious poor persons." In the autumn} when he intro- duced his Bill he .proved that any doctrines he had acquired from Adam Smith and had opposed to the suggestions of Whitbread had not penetrated deeply. His • Bill was a mad; pluiperizing Measure. Take, for example, the following pro- visions from Dr. ROse's summary :-

" A father entitled to poor relief, who is unable to support his children exceeding two in number, or a widow unable to support more than one child,- shall receive not loss than one shilling a week' ter each thud above that number until 'the child becomes self- -supporting. If ia,.poor and industrious person cannot maintain himself it shall be lawful to make good from the rates the deficiency in his earnings. If by the purchase of a cow or other aniinal a.poor person can maintain a family•withottathe receipt of further relief, the parish shall be at liberty to advance money for such pnrchase, the loan being repaid on termg to be agreed on. No poison shall be excluded front poor relief unless his or her property- or belongings exceed £30 in value; but those who luiVe riot a legal settlement in the parish shall not benefit by the present legislation."

'Old-age pensions and insurance against invalidity on a nen- .compulsory contributory basis were included in the Bill. The =schools of industry were to be supervised by two magistrates and by duly qualified Visitors of the Poor. Pitt had hia Bill printed with wide margins and circulated it for the comments experts. Several of those who really understood the poor ridiculed it as a dangerous measure. None of the political libilosephera was more severe than Bentham. He pointed out that the essential necessity of distinguishing between the 'deserving and the undeserving was simply ignored. The .opportunities for fraud in the ridiculous "cow-money clause 'Were 'unlimited. It was- probably largely owing to Bentham's :strictures that Pitt dropped the Bill. As Dr. Rose well says 'if Pitt's attempt to solve the Poor Law problem :--s

" The old rural England was merging into' the new industrial England ; and ho who kneW little more than the life of a pro- 1perous village sought to apply to the whole land a cure suitable to the homes of Arcady. His psaaichhtl Pension Fund was a pleasing device, workable only where the parson and squire wore .actuaries in embryo. His Scheel of Indttstry further presumed *hat they •peesecsea, technical skill and organizing powers of no mean order! for, without guidance from headquarters, who can cheaply and efficiently teach diverse trades and callings to small groups of rustics ? As for the pauper cow, she is clearly an ddyllic creation."

Pitt never had leisure to return to the subject. The relief of thepoor drifted on with its heavy burden of abuse and error ill 'the revelations of 1834 brought about a reconstruction. Wound it not be the profoundest of ironies if 'it were not also the grentest of Commonplaces that one generation learns absolutely nothing even in such matters as this from its pre- decessors P At this moment we are being invited'to return to all the blunders of Pitt's day.